If you’re unlucky enough, you may login to your computer one day to find a rather worrying message claiming that – for some reason – your computer has been blocked and you cannot access it until you pay a fee or ransom.
The message may claim to be from the authorities and that illegal material was detected on your computer. It may just say your computer is infected and access will not be allowed until you pay a ransom. It may say the files on your hard drive have been encrypted and you need to pay for the decryption key.
In all these cases, you’ve been infected with a type of malware called ransomware.
Ransomware is a type of malware. It prevents you from accessing your computer and tells you that you need to pay money – often via the untraceable Bitcoin – to regain access to your computer and/or files. It’s been around for a number of years now, and it can be either bad news or really, really bad news depending on what strain of ransomware has infected you.
Like all types of malware, with the right tools ransomware can be removed. The first thing to remember is that if the ransomware is telling you that you can only access your computer once you pay up, then it is lying to you. It is important that at this stage, you should not consider paying any money. We first have to know what we are dealing with.
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Booting the computer into safe mode and running (or installing then running) your antivirus programs should be sufficient enough to remove most strains of ransomware. We recommend a combination of Malware-Bytes and BitDefender to remove most types of ransomware.
Now, for the early versions of ransomware, this should be enough and access to the computer should be restored.
However, for more advanced versions of ransomware, there is another issue that will arise. Some strains of ransomware actually encrypt your personal files stored on your computer, meaning that even if you remove the actual ransomware infection, your files are still encrypted. In this case the chances are high that the only way to decrypt the files would be with the decryption key. Sadly this is only available through the criminals who infected your computer, and they’ll want you to pay up.
This in turn means your only choices at this stage would be to accept that your files are gone or risk paying the ransom and hope the criminals provide the decryption key. Neither is a good solution, but sadly the encryption strength is so strong that the good guys can’t crack it. You need that decryption key!
Ransomware infects computers in the same way as other malware does. Through malicious email attachments you shouldn’t open. Through deceptive website downloads or drive-by downloads. By inserting infected disks into your computer. Or by exploiting out-of-date software you have running on your computer.
Providing you stick with good online security habits, the chances of you getting infected with ransomware should be slim.